Shame on you

I am actually surprised that Dan Gryder, the 777 pilot in this video (http://bit.ly/19tPei) commented on the PIO (pilot-induced oscillations) and "poor landing form" of the A380 pilot flying into OSH. All pilots have tough landings. It was inappropriate to comment as he did. He must be a sucky pilot himself. Obviously he does not and will not ever fly the A380. He probably has no appreciation for the tension the A380 pilot was under, having never been in such a situation himself. I remember my crosswind landings, from training, with an instructor with me, to real life solo situations. They take practice and experience, and yes, you can PIO. However, you learn, and move on. You don't slam someone because of something like that. You know what, that A380 pilot had balls. He was handflying the A380. An autopilot-engaged autoland would not be like the one we saw. The autopilot computers, all of them activated (with backups ready to take over in case primary autopilot systems fail) would have flown the approach all the way down, and kicked in rudder to straighten out from the crab at the appropriate juncture without human intervention. Our A380 pilot was trying to be true to the spirit of aviation, which is really is about stick and rudder. Not cool, Dan.

FIOS

Verizon: please stop sending me shiny flyers if you're not going to deliver FIOS.

*** Composed with Vlingo for BlackBerry. http://www.vlingo.com/voice

Google

First, Google had search. In 2004 or so they expanded into e-mail (anyone placed a bid for an invitation on Ebay?) and slowly expanded to apps, website hosting, acquired Blogger, acquired Picasa, launched Google Maps, put GPS capabilities into it, introduced Latitude, launched Google Wave recently at their developers' conference, and today, Google Voice. Each product is built to do one function (or tightly related functions), and it does so remarkably well. All of them tie pretty well together, leverage each other (e.g. get a voicemail on Google Voice and receive an e-mail with a web site link to the voicemail), most use single sign-on, have good mobile versions, etc. If Google keeps riding the innovation wave as it has, what wondrous things can we expect to see? What would you LIKE to see?

Single source of the truth

I post Facebook updates via Twitter and blog posts via Blogger (by way of www.chatterjees.com/blog). It sure is convenient to have one source of the truth.

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Test